The $13 billion Murray Darling Basin Plan is a transformational reform. It is a response to the over-extraction of the basin‘s water, which is causing irreversible damage to the Basin's environment and, ultimately, communities that rely on it. 

However, The Murray Darling Basin Plan is failing.

In the Australia Institute’s submission to the MDB Royal Commission, our research has found:

1 // The Basin Plan numbers no longer represent actual water. This manipulation will first affect taxpayers, but will ultimately adversely impact the property rights of all water licence holders, including those licences held for irrigation and the environment.

2 // The Plan has increased the flow of money to big agribusinesses and left everyone else behind, increasing the vulnerability of those who rely on the Basin for their livelihoods – native title holders, floodplain graziers, downstream communities and small irrigators.

3 // Millions in taxpayers money is being spent with no oversight. Despite millions of dollars of public money being used to fund ‘efficiency measures’ there seems to be no assessment of whether and how this work is carried out. In fact, the Commissioner suggested this would need to be referred to the Auditor General to investigate.